Review Acer Iconia W510 Convertible

Keyboard tablet. Tablets together with a keyboard dock are currently the latest craze among PC manufacturers: the lightweight of a tablet without having to waive on the comfort of a hardware keyboard plus more interfaces sounds good to the customer. Acer runs in the same vein with its Iconia W5 series and we scrutinized the Iconia W510.

The advantages of uniting different worlds: This could describe the idea Acer follows with the Iconia W510. The buyer gets a full-blown 10.1-inch tablet alongside a dock that can be inserted in the tablet. This dock encompasses a complete keyboard, additional ports and even a second battery. A model featuring 3G is to also be available next year and be called Acer Iconia W511.

Intel's Atom Z2760 CPU sounds like a netbook processor and Acer's Iconia W510 looks one in a closed state: slim and light. However, the Iconia can also be used as a tablet or the dock as a stand. Acer offers interesting software goodies that are to facilitate use. We'll take a look at how all this fits together.

Case

Overall elegant and flexible: Acer Iconia W510

The first thing you see when you unpack your new Acer Iconia W510 is a 10.1-inch tablet with a white frame and silver back. Another, deeper look in the box reveals the keyboard dock in which the tablet can be inserted, and which is so important for this concept. The dock's keys and hinge are white, but silver elsewhere.

The hinge can only be moved vertically, so up and down, and not be turned horizontally like in Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga. In return, the hinge can be folded by more than 180° which turns the dock into a stand for the screen. Acer dubs this presentation mode. The keyboard's surface is on the table in presentation mode. Spacers and the slightly lowered keyboard prevent unintentional inputs. The biggest advantage of this mode is that the screen's touch functions are easier to use because the Iconia cannot topple over like in the so-called productivity mode, i.e. when the keyboard is unfolded.

Acer's Iconia W510 generally makes a good quality impression although the tablet wobbles a bit when inserted in the dock. The screen should not be folded too far back because the base cannot prevent the device from toppling from an angle of approximately 130°. There is not much danger of damage since the screen hovers quite close over the desk in this position. As mentioned, it is generally possible to use the touch function in productivity mode. However, Acer's Iconia W510 is more stable in the presentation mode intended for this.

Otherwise, Acer's Iconia W510 hardly exhibits any drawbacks as a tablet or netbook. The hinge is stable and has a firm hold on the screen in most positions. The surface features a good grip and is fingerprint resistant. The device has a solid and compact feel and does not yield under pressure. The tablet smoothly slides into the dock and it can be removed just as easily. Acer's Iconia W510 remains agreeably stable on both the touch-sensitive front as well as the back even as a pure tablet.

In terms of weight, the 117 gram (~0.26 pound), lightweight power supply unit is noticed favorably and the 580 gram (~1.28 pound) tablet is pleasant to hold without feeling heavy. The device plus the keyboard dock weighs 1266 grams (~2.79 pounds) and is still portable. Nevertheless, it weighs somewhat more than 11.6-inch convertibles due to the second battery.

Connectivity

At least one full-sized USB port is installed in the base unit of Acer's Iconia W510. A micro USB port, like known from cell phones, is found on the tablet. It mutates into a full-sized USB port via the included adapter. Samsung proves that more is possible with its ATIV Smart PC by installing a total of three full-sized USB ports. However, the device is also 1.5 inches bigger.

Apart from the USB port, Acer only incorporates a power socket in the very slim base unit. The tablet sports a power socket, micro SD slot, mini HDMI port and a headphone jack. The SIM card slot is not visible in our device. However, a model featuring mobile Internet dubbed Iconia W511 is to be launched in 2013.

Acer treats the W510 to a special feature: Owing to Always On, the tablet is to continuously update itself in standby mode like a smartphone. The user has the latest mails and news on the tablet when it is reactivated.

Front: Power button, speaker/mic combo jack, rotation lock

Tablet rear: Power socket

Right upper side: Volume, micro HDMI, micro USB

Right lower side: Micro SD, speaker, USB

Communication

The Wi-Fi adapter comes from Broadcom and supports the fast WLAN 802.11 n standard. Bluetooth and the latest NFC technology are also installed.

This so-called "near field communication" enables compatible devices within each other's range to communicate without previous configuration. No one can say whether this technology will prevail yet, but it is currently used in cell phones for buying train tickets or paying small sums without cash, for example. However, Acer makes the Iconia W510 fit for the future by installing it.

Accessories

The keyboard dock for Acer's Iconia W510 is always included, just like a dust cloth, micro USB-to-USB adapter and a quick start guide. Apart from the PSU, there is not much more in the box.

Software

Acer installs a few very interesting programs, such as "Acer Ring". This software is opened by pressing all five fingers in a circle on the screen and enables accessing personal documents, pictures and video in Windows libraries quickly, playing music and controlling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and auto-brightness.

Moreover, Acer's Cloud is a very interesting and somewhat different Cloud idea. Acer uses the fact that the tablet will unlikely be shut down and is left in standby mode, like a smartphone. Thus, Acer uses the hard disk as cloud storage and allows easy access to shared data from many devices via your own server. An app for Android phones and Windows PCs is currently available.

In addition to the usual, exasperating adware like eBay or 7 digital, we find a drawing program (Skitch), an RSS reader (newsXpresso) and the note program Evernote.

Warranty

A 12-month bring-in warranty is really the minimum that a manufacturer can offer. An additional seller's warranty of 12 months on production-related flaws is included in the European Union.

Warranty upgrades are available on Acer's website. Unfortunately, it is not specified whether you have to buy a laptop or a tablet warranty upgrade for the Iconia W510.

Webcam

Two webcams are standard in modern tablets and allow video calls as well as usually good pictures and videos. Acer's Iconia W510 sports a front-facing webcam with a Full HD resolution (1920x1080) and an 8 megapixel webcam on the rear alongside an LED flash.

We noticed a very visible color noise after only a short period of use. This occurs when cameras are too light-sensitive. The auto-focus also often had problems finding the right focus. The pictures are overall usable, but the colors tend to look a bit pale and the aforementioned color noise turns up in low light.

The picture also looks unfocused and color fringing occurs with the front-facing camera. However, high expectations should not be placed on this camera because its main purpose will be video calls.

The rear-facing camera shoots unfocused pictures

The front-facing camera's quality is not ideal either

Input Devices

Keyboard

It is logical that compromises have to be made on keyboards of the 10.1-inch category. Acer knows this and exploits the base unit's entire width for the keyboard. The flat letter keys in the chiclet keyboard feature a size of 14 mm (~0.55 inches). The entire keyboard is slightly lowered so that the keys are not accidentally triggered in presentation mode, i.e. when the keyboard lies face down on the desk. The distance between the single keys is only 3.5 mm (~0.14 inches), but typing is precise.

The keys make a cramped impression elsewhere and there is no gap between the "[]" and left shift key as well as between the "#" and enter key. This caused occasional typos in our practical test.

The pressure point and stability are good over the entire keyboard. However, the typing noise is transmitted quite intensely to the table through the thin base unit, which can make typing quite loud depending on the surface.

Touchpad

The touchpad is centered in the base unit and neither left nor right-handed users are discriminated. Both mouse buttons are integrated in the touch-sensitive surface. Multi-touch gestures are not supported and thus pinch-to-zoom, like known from phones or tablets, is not possible. Multi-touch on the tablet would help make use more consistent because the familiar gestures used on the tablet's touchscreen could then be performed on the touchpad.

The touchpad only makes an average overall stable impression since it can be marginally pressed down on its sides, which is likely due to the integrated keys. Working with the mouse replacement is unsatisfactory in other respects. The pad exhibits good gliding traits and the buttons feature a decent pressure point and its size is also sufficient. However, the cursor recurrently hitched during our tests, which actually disqualifies the touchpad for everyday use.

Touchscreen

The multi-touchscreen is far more than a gimmick in a device that can also be used as a tablet. We coped quite well with the touchscreen; all inputs were detected very well. However, not too much pressure should be applied when using the device in productivity mode because the base unit otherwise lifts up from the surface.

By the way, when placing all five fingers in a circle on the screen, "Acer Ring" is opened, which is a proprietary program from Acer that we described under "Software". This application also worked reliably right from the start.

Keyboard

Touchpad

Touchscreen

Display

The 10.1-inch, so-called "CineCrystal" screen features a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The screen has a layer of Gorilla Glass 2, which is currently used in many devices and makes a very high-quality impression.

If you now think that everything has been said with that, you should continue reading. The screen is an IPS display that is much higher quality than the TN screens installed in cheap tablets. Its advantages include a wider viewing angle without color distortion, swift switching times and higher color fidelity. But even IPS screens vary greatly from model to model.

The colors look crisp and bright subjectively, which is particularly fun with a colorful operating system like Windows 8. The contrast of 780:1 is also very satisfactory, although screens like that of Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga achieve even better rates.

If you work outdoors, you will have to somehow live with the glossy screen. However, this drawback is common for all tablets on the market.

Viewing angles: Acer Iconia W500

The colors on the screen of Acer's Iconia W510 first distort when sitting at a very lateral angle to the screen. We had a hard time producing any color distortions vertically. The screen's illumination is also quite homogeneous and the maximum brightness of 292 cd/m² is higher than in most laptops. It is also great that this maximum rate is maintained on battery power.

Performance

The objective of Acer's Iconia W510 is geared more to ensure the greatest degree of mobility for a reasonable price than to achieve high performance. In the review of Samsung's ATIV Smart PC we ascertained that the new generation of Atom CPUs is much faster than the previous one, but still very inferior to those in classic laptops.

Cinebench proves that even the simplest Intel Pentium processors calculate a lot faster than the Atom CPU in Acer's Iconia W510. Nevertheless, 435 points in Shading is almost 50% more than with former Atom generations.

Acer's Iconia W510 is and remains a tablet and can compete with modern smartphones in the comparison, as Geekbench shows:

Samsung's ATIV Smart PC reaped in similar scores owing to almost identical equipment. The latest iPad and iPhone generation provide a considerably higher performance than Acer's Iconia W510 but also cost significantly more.

System Performance

The system obtained decent scores in PCMark 7. Unfortunately, PCMark Vantage did not record any results although it started on our system. The achieved PCMark 7 score of 1248 points is on a par with those of Samsung's ATIV XE500 convertibles. Laptops like Asus' K53 (AMD A4-3305M/7670M) or HP's 630 (Intel P6200/GMA HD) are on a comparable level.

The subjective work speed has also improved in comparison with older netbooks. This is most likely due to the incorporated flash memory and the faster processor. The integrated graphics solution has not experienced a performance boost compared with earlier Atom generations.

Storage Devices

64 GB of storage is quite acceptable for a tablet, especially when it can be expanded via a micro SD card. However, not only the storage capacity counts but also the performance.

Acer installs an eMMC memory in the Iconia W510. It does not have any movable parts and thus has a longer life. It also ensures a higher data rate than conventional hard disks.

However, the eMMC storage device used here cannot be compared with the performance of SSDs that are increasingly being used in larger laptops. The performance is much lower though still faster than that of conventional hard disks.

This is confirmed in the AS SSD benchmark specially developed for SSDs. Note: Only one of four tests could be performed properly with the non-removable flash memory in Acer's Iconia W510.

Gaming Performance

Those looking for a system that can deal with graphics hits among games are certainly poorly advised with an Atom system. An Intel Core processor alongside a dedicated graphics card would be necessary for this.

However, the configuration will satisfy anyone who is content with browser and social gaming or likes to play an at least 7 year old and not too demanding game, as the scores from the older 3DMark range show. We tested "The Settlers Online" representative of browser games and did not experience any problems.

However some browser games do not detect the integrated flash player in the Internet Explorer app from Windows 8. Then you have to switch to the desktop and start Internet Explorer from there, which works.

Emissions

Like in most other tablets, nothing is heard from Acer's Iconia W510 unless music is played. The passive cooling enables working in absolute silence.

Temperature

Former Atom processor in netbooks almost always sported a fan. The new generation proves that this works very well without one. But how does that affect the casing's temperature?

As usual, we performed the stress test and looked at the infra-red test after one hour of full load. We can say that while no major temperature increase could be observed in no load or during normal use, the tablet heated up in demanding tasks. We measured temperatures of over 45 °C (113 °F) on the top and even 50 °C (122 °F) on the back.

You will have to count on warm hands if you are planning to push the tablet's computing power to its limits. However, such temperatures will usually not be achieved during normal use. Nevertheless, other tablets remain significantly cooler in stress situations.

The keyboard unit does not heat up because no performance relevant parts are installed in it. The power supply unit can also be pulled out of the socket after a few hours of full load without fear. We measured 44.4 °C (~111.9 °F), which is noticeably warm but not hot.

The speakers are on the tablet's right and left lower edge. This is unfavorable because when the device is used in tablet mode, the hands cover the speakers and muffle the already rather meek sound even more. As in many portable sound systems, it is especially lacking low ranges and the speakers also overdrive in higher volumes.

The familiar 3.5 mm jack serves as the headphone-out. It is combined with the microphone-in and enables connecting headsets. Whether this is useful or not depends on the headset. Only the audio-out is available when a classic PC headset with two jack plugs is connected. In return, a headset featuring a single microphone and speaker jack can be used perfectly with Acer's Iconia W510.

Regardless of that, decent runtimes should be possible anyway because the power consumption is only 5 - 10% of a multimedia laptop.

A minimum power consumption of 1.7 Watts is possible when the device is not loaded. The device does not consume any power when it is off, which is surprisingly not a matter of course for other devices. The PSU can supply a maximum of 18 Watts and is agreeably very small.

Power Consumption

Off / Standby

0 / 0.3 Watt

Idle

1.7 / 4.2 / 6.9 Watt

Load

8.2 / 9.7 Watt

Key:
min: ,
med: ,
max: Voltcraft VC 960

Battery Runtime

The 3540 mAh, 2-cell lithium-polymer battery had to show its runtime at idle, full load and in the practical Wi-Fi browsing test.

A feature of Acer's Iconia W510 is that the dock sports a second battery that is to double the runtime when the tablet is inserted. In fact, impressive times are possible. Our tablet even lasted longer than Acer's specified maximum runtime with over 19 hours. 11 hours were still possible when the screen was set to maximum brightness and the components were loaded. As expected, the Wi-Fi test settled to between these times.

Of course, these rates are only possible when the tablet is used in the dock. Otherwise the runtimes are pretty exactly halved. Convenient: On the one hand, the dock's battery is drained first so that the tablet still has a full battery when it is removed even after several hours of working without being connected to the outlet. On the other, the tablet seamlessly switches from one battery to the other when it is inserted or removed.

The tablet also features a power socket so that it can be recharged without the dock.

Overall, the dual-battery solution is solved very well and works flawlessly with Windows 8.

Battery Runtime

Idle (without WLAN, min brightness)

19h 9min

WiFi Surfing

13h 35min

Load (maximum brightness)

11h 17min

Verdict

Light and flexible companion with minor drawbacks: Acer's Iconia W510

Is Acer's Iconia W510 a handy companion? Definitely. But is it suitable for everyone? Probably not. If you need a lot of power on the move, you should instead consider an ultrabook. If you want to connect many devices, you will at least have to buy a USB hub in addition to Acer's Iconia W510.

On the other hand, Acer's Iconia W510 is finally an affordable Windows 8 convertible that could be appealing with a full 32-bit version of the operating system, a great screen, a good quality build for the price range and many useful software offerings from Acer.

When the tablet is inserted in the dock, you get outstanding battery runtimes, a decent keyboard or a firm stand.

If you can accept the second-rate touchpad and heat development during load, do not need much power for your work and value the device's flexibility, you will find a solid companion in Acer's Iconia W510.